[gnidan]

I certainly agree with the author's point about the importance of teaching/caring for others/etc., but I don't think it is a sound argument to say that making is a "male" process, so therefore a society that values making things is a society that undervalues women. Certainly there are two valid things to discuss there, but the conflation of maker value and sexism seems very forced.

[jnem]

When will we stop thinking in terms of "How things look through my glasses". I.E. My glasses have red tint, so the whole world looks red. Your glasses have a green tint, so likewise, the world is green to you.

Some identify their car as feminine, as in, "She's fast, I tell you what!". Others identify their vehicles as masculine, "This guy right here, he can do 0-60 in under 6 seconds!"

The part that bugs me is when you are wearing red glasses and you tell me the world is red, even though I have green ones and tell you with (my own) certainty that it is not. In reality, these definitions shift all the time, as does your eye-wear (tomorrow I'm thinking of wearing blue glasses) as the combination of properties that make you YOU evolve.

Gender can be like glasses sometimes. While our perceptions are a complicated combination of all sorts of properties, i.e. "I'm male with blue glasses who grew up in California." + 1,000,000 * otherThings... wearing blue glasses is a common denominator. So, yes, when you only cite female sources, and you are talking about hard to measure concepts like the quality a word implies (where quality is based on perception), it’s very easy to reason that something like “Maker” can have both gender and classism baked in.

Luckily, due to this same phenomenon, tomorrow the author may review her article and think, “My that was a silly argument”. Likewise, I may do the same.

[current_call]

All lenses are not equal. Reality is the way things work despite our lenses. Opaque lenses give a misleading view of reality. Clear lenses give an accurate view of reality.

[dasil003]

There is no knowledge of reality without a lens.

[current_call]

What actually happens despite how I think things work is reality. If I'm bad at judging the consequences of my actions then my view of reality is poor. Just because all knowledge is seen through lenses doesn't mean all lenses are equal. A person who can predict the consequences of actions accurately is seeing the world through clear lenses.

There was a time when no one knew the equations of gravity in exquisitely rigorous detail, yet if you walked off a cliff, you would fall. http://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth/

[dasil003]

It's funny that in a discussion about sexism, you are hanging your hat on the objectivity of physics.

[current_call]

Here's a quick reminder about why sexism is bad. Sexism is bad because it disadvantages people through no fault of their own. Sexism is part of reality. Theories and opinions about sexism do not effect the actual impact of sexism. You could be looking through a lens where you can't see inequality, but that doesn't mean there is none.

[mhink]

That's not exactly what she's saying. She's basically advocating for 'non-making' roles in society, and contending that society undervalues 'non-making' roles as a result of undervaluing women's roles in society, since they traditionally occupied 'non-making' roles.

Note these paragraphs in particular:

"The cultural primacy of making, especially in tech culture—that it is intrinsically superior to not-making, to repair, analysis, and especially caregiving—is informed by the gendered history of who made things, and in particular, who made things that were shared with the world, not merely for hearth and home."

"A quote often attributed to Gloria Steinem says: “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Maker culture, with its goal to get everyone access to the traditionally male domain of making, has focused on the first. But its success means that it further devalues the traditionally female domain of caregiving, by continuing to enforce the idea that only making things is valuable. Rather, I want to see us recognize the work of the educators, those that analyze and characterize and critique, everyone who fixes things, all the other people who do valuable work with and for others—above all, the caregivers—whose work isn’t about something you can put in a box and sell."

Which I think is a pretty reasonable argument.

[vezzy-fnord]

The core premise that society undervalues "non-making" seems wrong, though. It can certainly feel that way when you hang around in specific circles and subcultures where it is disproportionately represented (as the author presumably does, mentioning technology), but on a macro level Western culture is in favor of positions that have historically been considered prestigious and well-paid - law, medicine, finance and so forth.

Someone whose title includes "manager" is likely held in higher regard, than say, someone with "engineer". Doesn't matter what kind of manager, the term itself has positive connotations to laymen.

Then of course, artists are stereotypically associated with bohemianism and poverty.

As an example, certain aspects that encompass "maker culture", including many fields that fundamentally intersect with programming, aren't even formal professions.

[stegosaurus]

Not to mention the fact that modern feminism is focusing mainly on getting women into 'non-making' jobs, specifically because of the reasons you mention.

Working as a builder (can't think of anything more 'maker' than that) isn't particularly glamorous. Being a lawyer/banker/exec is.

Software development is relatively unique in the way that it gives you the ability to command a reasonable salary whilst straddling the line between directly producing and facilitating production.

[blueMist]

Personally, I think the "maker" culture was (also) a great way to recognize the contribution of women who traditionally made a lot of things from scratch for the home, etc. Someone else here made the same point, I believe. The article does seem to go out of its way to make a point that could stand on its own. I am the first to admit I question people who don't make things, but "just" criticize, however that has nothing to do with gender, but with a different kind of bias.

[mkal_tsr]

I still haven't found a compiler that compiles source code differently based on a user's gender or identity...

[coldtea]

How about colleagues and upper management that criticize that code differently?

[mkal_tsr]

Upper management look at code, ha!

Every team I've been on has criticized each other's code equally harsh. If coding standards weren't followed (whoops, you missed a space between parenths, try again!) they'd be called out, if someone had a better idea for an implementation / approach, they were free to speak up and heard out. When I started out on one team I thought I was being unfairly criticized, until I saw others make the same mistakes I was and boom, they received the same feedback. As time went on and I was able to better follow agreed upon standards, and my implementations (and test cases) improved in quality, I was called out less and less, unless I made a mistake again. The focus in the reviews was always about the code and never who wrote the code - this is great because it helps break down the idea that the criticism is about the person rather than (correctly) the inert code.

The point I'm alluding to in my OP is to is similar the debate/discussion about AI and spirituality [Jaron Lanier's essay here - http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-ai]. When people frame this tech / gender discussion, it's always "gender issues in tech" and I think that is (pedantically) wrong. The technology (source code, compiler, CPU) have no native understanding of a user nor their identity. They treat the input exactly the same. A node interacting with another node. So it's not really "gender issues in tech" but rather, "gender issues in society, but with a focus on the technology industry / market" It's a pedantic point, but by not being explicitly clear in definitions and discussion framing, there tends to be a leakage of irrelevant facts/statistics/feelings that contaminates discussions and derails productive conversations. When that happens, discussions fall back into their usual talking points and counter-points rather than focusing on producing solutions.

[dasil003]

You acknowledge that you have a pedantic hangup over the semantics of the phrase "gender issues in tech", and then you construct this elaborate straw man about how the technology itself is gender agnostic (which is not a revelation, it is true of literally all inanimate objects) and that the gender issues are in society as a whole.

But what you haven't done is acknowledge that the tech industry has its own manifestation of sexism that is distinct from that of wider society, in some ways more pernicious, and in fact we've regressed in the last 20 years.

I also have to say, the way that you constructed this whole argument perfectly illustrates why sexism is tech is a difficult problem: tech people tend to be smart and well-reasoned, and often have a liberal and egalitarian self-image, so it's very easy for them to construct a solid case for why they themselves could never be racist or sexist. All the while blissfully ignorant of the reality other people are experiencing. I'm deliberately not using the hot-button label for white males in this context because I think it's counter productive, but just stop for a minute a consider that your experience might not apply to everyone.

[mkal_tsr]

It's not an elaborate strawman to want clearer definitions and a cleaner scope for discussion. Further you have not proven,

> then you construct this elaborate straw man about how the technology itself is gender agnostic [...] and that the gender issues are in society as a whole

is factually wrong. You admit that technology as a whole is gender agnostic, so you actually agree with my premise.

And actually I have acknowledged that there is sexism in tech because it is progressed by individuals (read: people) that come from a society. That society provides the context to their actions and motivations, regardless of which industry they are employed in (though each industry will vary in specifics). When one limits the discussion to only the tech industry they prevent any comparisons to other industries, both at a specific point in time as well as long-term / trends, which limits the ability to judge and measure progress. Limiting the judging to merely internal progress means that one will be unsure if that industry is progressing faster or slower than other industries wrt whatever we're discussing (in this case, gender issues in tech). In addition, it prevents people from discussing where industry A has made progress that industry B can look to, or learn from the mistakes of industry C. That is not possible if the discussion is silo-ed within only a single industry.

Also, what do Caucasians have to do with gender? That came out of no where, how is that relevant to this? You also seem to imply that I don't believe I could ever make a sexist comment or action, yet I never stated that, so why would you imply that? You're projecting yourself onto my words, please stop, it's disingenuous.

Welp, here's a thesis that concludes that men who treat women equally are seen as treating women as inferiors - https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/handle/10012/6958/Yeu...

So if that thesis can be reproduced, then all gender issues need to be reexamined as they'd be tainted by bias of treating men who treat women equally as men who are sexist.

You haven't actually proven anything I've said to be incorrect, you've just tried to take it out of context and ignore some points here and there as a means to discredit my words and intentions. I'm sorry I treat people equally (we're all individual nodes in this big cog of society) and other people do not, but the fact remains, the framing of the discussion is inherently limiting to making progress by limiting the scope and depth of such a discussion.

[acdha]

It's telling that you're so quick to support your argument with the same misleading and over-generalized summary which has been circulating heavily in the Men's Rights community recently.

I would strongly suggest actually reading the study rather relying on someone else's summary. In particular, pay attention to the reason why she ran the second study and what was actually being measured, namely reactions to this paragraph:

“I disagree with the many people who think that women should be cherished and protected by men. You know I’m strongly against that whole idea that in a disaster women should always be rescued before men. And I really don’t agree with those who say that men should put women on a pedestal or that men are incomplete without women in their lives. There seems to be this popular attitude that women are more pure and moral than men and that women should therefore be treated with greater respect than men, but I think that’s a lot of nonsense.”

The second study found that simply prefixing that paragraph with “I’m a firm believer in equality between men and women. And because of that” removed much of the ambiguity which lead many people to conclude that the author was probably a misogynist.

Beyond that, simply looking at the test is already telling you that this isn't the sweeping result certain defensive men are claiming – it's a single study measuring reactions to a single, somewhat stilted paragraph over the internet in isolation (they used Mechanical Turk to get participants). That doesn't mean that it's not a decent study but it would immediately tell you not to believe the results apply generally to complex real-world interactions where few normal people randomly state manifestos like that and almost everything happens in a context with a history of past interactions which guide the listener's interpretation.